Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Phantom Locations on Google Maps

Punt PI - The Hunt for ArgletonBBC Radio 4 programme Punt PI this week investigated the mysterious town of Argleton on Google Maps. The town of Argleton used to appear on Google Maps even though there is apparently nothing there apart from a field.

The town name has actually been removed from Google Maps now. However Google cannot hide this phantom town that easily. In fact if you hover Pegman over the field where the Argleton placename used to sit you can see a number of user submitted photographs of Argleton.

For example, here is a user submitted photo of Argleton Castle,

And here is the world famous Argleton Rhubarb Factory,

In his radio programme for Radio 4 Steve Punt discovered more phantom locations on Google Maps. For example, here is the map and Street View of Torrington Place, Finchley, London.

Torrington Place, Finchley, London

Google Maps shows Torrington Place as a right turn at the end of Arcadia Avenue but Street View shows Arcadia Avenue to be a dead end. Also in Finchley is Moat Lane. Moat Lane is shown as a left turn at the end of Clandon Gardens but again Clandon Gardens in real life is a dead end.

Google Maps phantom locations in the UK don't end there either. There is Penworthamdale, that Google shows to be in Penworthham - but doesn't exist as a place name anywhere else. There is Mawdesky (near Mawdesley) - another figment of Google's imagination.

Finally there is the most imaginatively named Dummy1325. This is another phantom location that Google Maps has now deleted but thanks to our friends over at Google Sightseeing we can show you this screenshot from 2009.

So, do you know of any other phantom towns that show up on Google Maps?